


Knit One, Purl Two

by ClaraxBarton



Series: Thank you fics [5]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Beach life, Clothes Sharing, Deaf Character, Knitting, M/M, handjobs, lots of soft kissing, maybe I'm working through some personal feelings too, sex soft, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-06 20:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: Bucky tries to start again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RandomYarning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomYarning/gifts).

> For RandomYarning. Thank you so much for your support and I'm sorry it took me so long to write. I had to do the move things but now I'm settled in and so so happy to be writing again!

It was Sam’s fault because, really, _ most _ things were Sam’s fault.

Bucky’s lease was up, Steve had re-upped again because of fucking course he had, and Sam wouldn’t shut up about how great it was to live near the beach. So, Bucky rented a U-Haul, packed up his very few possessions, coaxed Alpine into her carrier after two hours of negotiations, and drove six hundred miles to his new life in a sleepy little North Carolina beach town.

He bought a house, because sure, one bad decision naturally led to another, and what _ else _ was he doing with the stupidly exorbitant salary Stark was paying Bucky to code?

It was a sad, weird little place right off the Intercoastal Waterway. It looked like the top of a barn, the bottom lopped off, and Bucky loved it immediately. From the aged and curling cedar shake shingles to the exposed interior rafters to the pine trees that were so thick Bucky almost felt like he didn’t even have neighbors. 

His first morning there, Bucky brewed himself a fresh pot of coffee, dumped a liberal amount of cinnamon into his mug along with the coffee, and sat on his little dock and watched the sun rise.

He’d never admit it to Sam, because Sam was an asshole, but it was probably the most peaceful Bucky had ever felt.

So. Maybe uprooting his entire life to live in a place where people spoke a dialect of English so different from his own that Bucky’s more than a little fucked-up brain sometimes had trouble processing it _ wasn’t _ the worst idea ever.

In fact… in fact, maybe it was okay.

Bucky spent his first three months there developing a new routine: coffee with the sunrise, work out for an hour, shower, code until lunch, lunch on the porch with Alpine, code in the afternoon, dinner on the porch with Alpine, five mile run at dusk, code until he fell asleep. 

It wasn’t exciting - as both Sam in person and Steve via email pointed out repeatedly - but it was _ fine _ and Bucky was _ fine _ . He was maybe even almost _ good, _ and that was such a novel concept, so tenuous and close, that Bucky didn’t want to dwell too much on how much better life was now than it had been just a few months ago when he was living out of his shoebox apartment and startling at every sudden noise from the street below. 

Which wasn’t to say that things were _ perfect _ here. People seemed keen to launch fireworks for no goddamn reason, and the thunderstorms were massive and world-ending. But, well, that’s what headphones and Xanax were for, as Sam had said. 

Because Sam said a lot of things. 

Things like ‘hey, you should come out to the bar with me tonight’. Or ‘you should swing by the VA in Wilmington with me’. Or ‘there’s this guy I know that you’d like’. Or ‘there’s this girl I know that you’d like’. Or ‘we’re having a barbeque this weekend, and you should come’. 

Things that Bucky could mostly ignore.

Things that Bucky _ did _ ignore.

Except Sam didn’t stop. He was just as much of an asshole as Steve, and just as much - if not _ more _ \- determined. 

He kept inviting Bucky out, no matter how many times Bucky turned him down. He kept trying to set Bucky up with people, no matter how many times Bucky said he wasn’t ready for that. 

And then he pulled out the big guns, the nuclear option.

_ Becca thinks you’re lonely _.

It was a given that Sam talked to Becca. They had hit it off immediately, when Bucky was still drugged out of his mind in a hospital bed in Germany, half-convinced he was still being held by terrorists and half-convinced he was finally, blessedly dead. They kept in touch, too, all through Bucky’s arduous recovery and his attempts to pretend to be a functioning human, and even now, three years after he had been rescued by Steve - the idiot - from his six months with the Taliban. 

So when Sam pulled that out, Bucky knew that the logical follow-up was _ so she’s going to come down and stay with you for a while _.

Bucky loved his sister. He did. More than he loved anyone else in the whole world, more even than he loved Steve and Sam. But she had an entire life - an important life half a world away in London - and she had already spent more time trying to fix him than anyone else should ever invest in such a losing prospect. He couldn’t let her do it again.

So Bucky finally gave in and said he would go on a date with whatever guy Sam had been talking up for months. Some former Marine sniper named Clint who ran an archery center down in Myrtle Beach, and who was, according to Sam, Bucky’s kind of stupid.

He wasn’t really sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure it was at least fifty percent insult. All of Sam’s best compliments always were.

Bucky shaved for the first time in a month, and… okay. That probably wasn’t great.

He maybe overcompensated after that realization, ironed his slightly wrinkled blue button-up shirt and then just… went ahead and ironed his jeans too, and what the _ fuck _ was wrong with him? He even contemplated ironing his fucking _ socks, _ and that…

Sam had set the whole thing up, probably because he knew Bucky would back out if he could, and the date was scheduled for seven, at some dive pizza place near the beach, halfway between Myrtle and Oak Island, and Bucky was already running late. Even before the ironing frenzy.

He was running late and there was traffic. Even though it was deep in the off-season, and who the fuck visited the beach in November anyway, there was traffic. There was always traffic. Sam had warned him about that, before he moved, and Bucky had rolled his eyes and reminded Sam that he hadn’t been in the Air Force, that he had been on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he knew what traffic was. He had grown up in Brooklyn, had spent the last three years traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan for check-ins with Stark for his prosthetic arm and for work. He knew what traffic was.

Except beach traffic was irritating as all hell. Because it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the parking lot of midtown during the day, and it wasn’t the incessant shouting and honking and dust and barely-functioning cars and zero traffic laws of Iraq. It was just stop lights. So many damn stop lights. So. Many.

And Bucky was low on gas, and Bucky was an anxious mess, so of course he stopped to fill up the battered Jeep he had purchased when he made the move, and of course… of course that’s when shit went from bad to worse.

At the gas pump across from his, a giant black truck was parked, decorated with all sorts of paraphernalia that did a damn good job of broadcasting just what kind of asshole owned the truck. 

Trump stickers. A confederate flag. Stainless steel balls dangling from the license plate. A male stick figure getting a blowjob from a female stick figure with a child stick figure beside them. 

Steve would have probably slashed the guys tires, if he had been there.

But Steve wasn’t there, and Bucky was… not Steve. So he drew in a deep breath, pointedly turned away, and watched the numbers scroll by as his tank filled.

Until the shouting started.

Because the asshole who owned the truck was, of course, an actual asshole. And he was shouting at the girl in the passenger seat of his truck. 

Bucky tried to tune them out. Because he wasn’t Steve. He wasn’t Steve and-

The asshole called her awful names. Said something about how easy she was and how much she wasn’t worth his time, and she started shouting back, just as loudly, just as viciously. 

It continued through the asshole shoving the gas pump back into the holster and slamming his way back into the truck cab. Continued even above the cranked-up music as they drove off, and Bucky was left standing by his battered Jeep, heart racing, head down, bile churning in his stomach.

Steve would have intervened. 

Sam would have, too. 

Steve would have shoved his way into the camo-wearing asshole’s face and called him on the decor of his truck and the way he spoke to the girl, and Steve would have made a difference.

Sam would have been more subtle, would have pointedly ignored the confederate flag and probably made mention of the asshole teaching kids about fellatio via bumper sticker, and would have asked the girl if she didn’t want to maybe date a less questionable guy.

But Bucky?

Bucky didn’t do any of that.

Bucky pumped his gas and tried not to crawl back into his Jeep, and forced back the burning, prickling sensation of fucking tears and- Fuck.

He made it to the bathroom before he threw up, and then he rinsed out his mouth and he glared at his reflection in the smudged mirror under the too-bright lights, and he wondered what the fuck he thought he was doing.

Bucky got back into his Jeep and made a U-turn as soon as he was able, and he drove back to his sad, lopped-off barn top house and Alpine greeted him with a judgemental flick of her tail, and Bucky went right to bed.

-o-

Becca was terrible at knitting, but apparently she had been glared at by too many nurses and doctors for typing away on her computer when she visited Bucky in the hospital that she decided to take it up.

Sam, because he was Sam, knew how to knit. Darlene Wilson hadn’t believed in raising a boy who couldn’t take care of himself, and that meant Sam knew how to cook and sew and clean and _ knit _ just as well as he knew how to change a tire or oil or assemble a gun with a blindfold on, and Bucky was still waiting for the details of how and why Darlene had taught him that one.

So Sam taught Becca how to knit, and Bucky was stuck holding the skein of yarn, and then, after PT and prosthesis fittings and more PT, Sam challenged Bucky to knit him a better sweater than Becca had. And, well, there wasn’t much of Bucky left from before he had been blown up and taken captive, but his sibling competitiveness was at least partially intact. So Bucky made Sam a sweater. And then he made Steve one. And then Becca. And, because maybe some of the asshole around him had rubbed off, he made one for Stark.

And then Sam took him to a Brooklyn knitting circle, once he deemed Bucky worthy, and once a month Bucky went and sat with a bunch of knitters and listened to them talk and laugh and work and, if it didn’t so much put him at ease, it at least gave him the chance to check off his ‘socialized’ box before meeting with his therapist again. 

When Bucky had moved down to the beach, Sam had given him the address and meeting time of a Stitch and Bitch knitting group in Wilmington. Bucky had yet to go, but, after the disaster of his not-date, he decided it was time to start checking off that socialized box again.

Two days later, he drove to Wilmington with a few skeins of purple yarn, some needles, and a few vague plans to make Steve a sweater vest because Steve was the kind of dumb asshole who would wear it.

Brooklyn being Brooklyn, there had always been a handful of men at the mostly female-populated knitting group. Bucky had expected, however, that Wilmington would be different. This was the South, after all, and Wilmington was a vaguely military town and… it was the South.

So he was surprised to walk in and see, among the dozen women setting up their projects, a broad-shouldered, tow-headed man with a bruise on his jaw and a cut across his nose and bandaids on nimble fingers that were already looping black yarn onto a needle.

Everyone looked up when Bucky entered.

“Hi,” he said, red-faced and awkward, and he was _ not _ going to run away from this too.

“Hey,” a red-haired woman with bright eyes and dark lipstick greeted him. “Join us.”

Bucky took a seat across from the other man in the group, and settled in while the woman - Wanda - introduced herself.

“James. Well, Bucky,” he introduced himself when Wanda looked at him expectantly.

The guy looked up from his work then, blue eyes flicking over Bucky before returning to his yarn.

“Welcome, Bucky,” Wanda was grinning, a wry little expression that spoke of humor and sadness and empathy. It made Bucky simultaneously want to leave and never leave. 

“Okay, now that we know who the hot new guy is - hi, I’m Bobbi,” a blonde-haired woman said, “can we _ please _ hear about your date because I am dying to know.”

Attention switched from Bucky to the other man, and Bucky felt a lot more relief than sympathy, even when the other man grimaced.

“There’s nothing to hear,” he sighed.

“Bullshit,” Bobbi nudged him with her foot. “You wouldn’t stop talking about how awesome this guy was, and now you’re just going to leave us all in suspense? You haven’t shut up about him for a _ month _.”

Bucky frowned as he started counting off loops on the chain. 

“Bobbi-”

“Come _ on _ . We’ve had to listen to you talk him up for forever, and now that you finally got to go out with him, you won’t even give us a _ tiny _ detail about-”

“There wasn’t a date,” the man interrupted Bobbi. “He stood me up.”

Bucky winced, and around the circle the women, even Bobbi, made sympathetic noises.

“Did he call to reschedule? I’m sure he had a good reason.” That was Wanda, reinforcing Bucky’s first estimation that she was kind and empathetic. 

“No,” the man sighed. “No call. I…” he trailed off and shrugged. “Guess it wasn’t really meant to be? I dunno.”

“You can’t give up that easily,” Bobbi scoffed. “Seriously, you haven’t shut up about him ever since Sam told you about his hot sniper friend who moved to town. You need to call him.”

Bucky’s hands froze.

_ Sam told you about his hot sniper friend who moved to town. _

How many Sams who knew snipers who had just moved to town were there, realistically, who had set said sniper up on a date and-

“Clint?” Bucky blurted out the name, because, because-

The man looked over at him, lips quirking upwards.

“Yep,” he drawled, exaggerating the p.

It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room.

Bucky shoved all of his knitting back into his backpack.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to say, even though his throat felt like it was full of glass and gravel and-

He stumbled out of the room, out of the building, and out into the sunlight and humidity, and he tried to breathe, tried to tell himself he _ could _ breathe and-

“Hey, hey, look at me, okay?”

It was him. It was Clint.

He had followed Bucky outside, and he was standing in front of him, frowning slightly and looking at Bucky with concern in his blue eyes, and Bucky didn’t-

“Bucky, it’s okay. Everything is okay. It’s- it’s just you and me and the five-thousand percent humidity, okay? It’s okay. Let’s just breathe. Or, like, drown our lungs in moisture, okay?”

Bucky choked on a laugh, coughed and struggled to breathe for a minute, and then, with Clint’s crooked smile to focus on, managed to get himself under control.

“Sorry,” he said again.

Clint rolled his shoulders in an easy shrug.

“It’s okay. Not the first time I’ve been stood up. Won’t be the last. I, uh, didn’t expect to see you at my knitting circle the same weekend though,” Clint added with another lopsided twist of his lips.

He had such pretty lips, Bucky thought, out of nowhere, with absolutely no right.

“I- I’m a mess,” Bucky stated the obvious.

“Welcome to the club,” Clint said. “Pretty sure that the whole ‘being a mess’ thing was what Sam figured we had in common. That, and exceptional eyesight and steady hands.”

Bucky’s gaze was drawn down to Clint’s fingers, to the bandages wrapped over them.

Clint waved his hands.

“Just, uh, had an accident with some oysters.”

Bucky didn’t even… He had no idea what that meant or if he even wanted to know.

“I didn’t want to stand you up,” Bucky’s mouth pushed the words out before he could stop himself. “I ironed my jeans.”

Clint’s lips twitched.

“You stood me up because you ironed your jeans?”

“No. No, I- I’m… You don’t want to get involved with me.”

Clint arched one eyebrow.

“I don’t? You got some kind of telepathic ability to know what I want?”

“I know no one should be involved with me. I’m a disaster. I-”

“I’m a disaster,” Clint said. “I cut myself shaving three times before our date. I fell down the stairs,” Clint gestured to the bruise on his face, “and I didn’t even iron my jeans. I spent the whole night before sitting up going through all the ways I was going to fuck it up within the first thirty seconds. I’m a disaster.”

“So did I,” Bucky admitted. “The ‘staying up and thinking of how I was gonna fuck it up’ thing. Not the other things.”

Clint grinned again.

“Maybe,” Clint licked his lips, looking down at Bucky with his bright eyes, “maybe we could be disasters together?”

Bucky thought about it.

“Maybe.”

  
  


* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Random Yarning, who wanted some MOAR.
> 
> Thank goodness too, because I sure as hell wanted to write more!

Three dates in, and Bucky still hadn’t gotten used to the idea that he was _ dating _ Clint Barton.

To be fair, one of those dates had been coffee right after Bucky’s meltdown the first time they met, so it hardly counted at all except Clint had ended the forty-five minutes of sitting together at a wobbly little cafe table with a soft smile and a _ thanks for the date _ that Bucky still replayed in his mind months later.

Months later, because their… courtship, or whatever it was, had been as staggeringly slow as pretty much everything Bucky attempted these days. It wasn’t even entirely his own fault.

Their first actual scheduled date - after the failed one - had been dinner and a movie in Shallotte, a tiny little town between Myrtle Beach and Oak Island that was more or less just sand and strip malls. That date had also been cancelled - not because of Bucky having a panic attack, but because of an out of season tropical storm and the both of them getting evacuated, and Clint having to pack up his dog and go to Atlanta for a week and Bucky taking Alpine up to Asheville, North Carolina and hiding in the mountains for a few days.

So, their first _ real _ date, after the coffee date, had been three weeks _ after _ that, had been lunch at a seafood shack in North Myrtle Beach. Clint had squirted lemon juice into Bucky’s face, and Bucky had, not at all in retaliation but also not with any regret, managed to get oyster juice all over Clint’s shorts as the two of them worked their way through a _ lot _ of oysters. Having to put so much effort into actually eating - prying the damned things open, scraping out the meat, dipping them into butter or, in Clint’s case, some freakish mix of cocktail sauce and tabasco sauce that Bucky was never, ever trying - meant that Bucky wasn’t second-guessing himself as much, and it meant that lulls in the conversation felt, if not natural, not as tense as they otherwise might have. It had been _ good _, had been fun, and the laughing kiss Clint pressed to Bucky’s cheek when he walked him out to his Jeep had made Bucky blush and smile, and it had been so easy, so good.

Which is probably why date number three had seemed cursed. First, Bucky had to cancel because Tony needed him to come to New York and help out with a presentation, and then Clint had had to cancel their rescheduled date - something about his brother and _ bullshit _ and _ I’m the worst human on the fucking planet _.

So now, here they were, ten weeks after they first met, just now going on their third date. 

The season, as the locals called it, was over, and Clint spent most of his weekends and weeknights operating his archery center and really only had week_ days _ free. Since Bucky’s schedule was as flexible as he allowed it to be, it only made sense for him to drive down to Myrtle Beach one Tuesday morning and go to Clint’s house for a promised ‘lunch on the river’.

They both lived on the Intercoastal, though in different states and nearly an hour away from each other, and their homes could not have been more different from the outside. 

Whereas Bucky’s house hugged the ground, lopped-off barn top surrounded by pine trees, Clint’s house was the more classic stilted style, roof rising above the nearest trees and a full wraparound balcony inviting Bucky to forego knocking on the front door and walk around until he was looking over the Intercoastal and getting an eye full of Clint half-naked on the dock and wrestling with a cooler.

Bucky was surprised and amused to see that the boat tied off to the dock was an aluminum Jon boat painted entirely in purple camo. It was distractingly hideous.

“Nice boat,” he called out, and had to wince when both Clint and the cooler almost fell into the water.

Clint managed to recover, and he stood up and glared up at Bucky.

“Fuck off,” he called, and Bucky had to smirk. 

It might only be their third date, might only be the sixth time they’d even spent time with each other, if he counted the knitting circle, but he and Clint had almost immediately started texting on a daily basis after that first coffee date. And by now, Clint’s obsession with the color purple was well-documented, as was Bucky’s amusement with Clint’s dedication to owning _ so much purple shit. _

Including the cargo shorts that Clint was currently wearing, riding low on his hips and showing off his broad, golden-tanned chest, arms and legs. They were so low, in fact, that Bucky was fairly certain that Clint wasn’t wearing underwear _ and _ that Clint didn’t have a tan line at his waist. 

And wasn’t that something to think about.

“You coming?” Clint called, as if reading Bucky’s mind.

Bucky found himself stumbling over a response, decided there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t be at least a little incriminating, and instead just found the stairs that would lead him from the balcony down to a cement foundation slab, and then to a path that cut through the sandy scrub to the dock and Clint.

“Hey, you,” Clint said when Bucky joined him, their bodies swaying closer together with the movement of the dock.

Bucky reached out, let his right hand rest on Clint’s hip to steady them.

“Hey, yourself,” he said, and Clint grinned before leaning down and pressing a soft, warm kiss against Bucky’s lips.

And then, out of nowhere, something barreled into the back of Bucky’s legs and he crashed into Clint.

Clint grabbed him, maybe trying to ease Bucky’s fall, but all that succeeded in doing was making sure that Clint took Bucky with him when he went flailing off the side of the dock.

Cold, salty, muddy water filled Bucky’s mouth and nose and lungs, and he struggled free of Clint and broke to the surface of the water coughing and gasping and _ freezing _.

Clint’s blond hair emerged beside him, and he looked just as bewildered as Bucky himself felt.

And then there was raucous barking followed by a _ splash _ and- 

And there was a dog, jumping into the water and paddling for Clint as Clint spluttered and grabbed the Jon boat with one hand and reached towards Bucky with the other.

Bucky let Clint haul him to the boat, which might or might not have been a good idea because then there was that same dog, licking Bucky’s face and making whining noises and flailing against both Bucky and Clint.

“Sorry!” Clint shouted, “Lucky - this is Lucky.”

“Not so sure about that,” Bucky muttered, and Clint looked at him in confusion, which had Bucky looking at him closer and, sure enough, Clint’s hearing aids were gone.

Bucky tapped his own ear, and Clint grimaced and rubbed a hand over his ears.

“Fuck. That’s - hell, Lucky,” Clint groaned, and the dog let out an exuberant bark.

Clint had talked about the dog before - the one-eyed mutt with worse taste than Clint, or so Clint claimed - so Bucky _ knew _ that his name was Lucky. And he knew that Clint was crazy about the dog, knew that Clint had had more than one night when he’d been low enough that the only thing keeping him around at all had been knowing Lucky depended on him. 

He hadn’t known that the dog was going to _ attack _ them or force this impromptu frigid swim. If he had, he would have worn very different clothes. 

Eventually, Clint managed to haul Lucky out of the water, and then Clint and Bucky climbed onto the dock and sat, dripping and exhausted and cold, for a few minutes to catch their breaths.

“This fucking sucks,” Clint eventually said, his voice loud.

Bucky had to nod in agreement.

“So much for our date.”

Bucky made sure to turn to face Clint before he responded. The only sign language Bucky knew was related to field ops, but Clint had said before that he was decent at lip reading.

“What about the boat ride I was promised?”

Clint looked exasperated.

“You still want to?”

Bucky didn’t, not really, and it was clear that Clint didn’t either. But he didn’t really want to _ go _ either - not soaking wet, and not when it had taken them this long to get here.

“Plan B?” Bucky suggested.

Clint frowned, thoughtful for a moment.

“Shower?” he offered, still speaking slightly too loudly. “I can throw your clothes in the wash, and we could watch a movie?”

“Sounds good,” Bucky said, because it actually did, especially after Clint gave him another bright grin and leaned close to give him another kiss, wet and cold though it was.

And then Lucky barked again, pawed at Bucky and tried to lick the both of their faces at once.

They broke away from each other, Bucky grimacing and Clint laughing.

“You,” Clint scratched his fingers through the dog’s tangled hair, “are the worst First Mate _ ever _.” The dog’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, and he looked up at Clint with adoration in his single eye. “Yeah, yeah,” Clint grumbled, and got to his feet. “Hope you enjoy drying off outside, buddy.”

Bucky stood up as well, taking the hand that Clint offered, and they made their way back to the house.

Despite Lucky’s whining, Clint did indeed leave the dog outside. Bucky watched as Lucky circled the door, still whining, and then found a patch of sunlit balcony and flopped down.

“C’mon,” Clint’s hand was on Bucky’s, tugging him away from the view, “I promise he’ll survive having to dry off in eighty degree weather.”

Bucky snorted a laugh, and even though Clint couldn’t hear him, he grinned at Bucky.

He was given a very brief tour - a kitchen that opened up to the dining room and living room area, all of it polished hardwood that gleamed golden and honey in the sunlight. There was a battered, linoleum-topped table in one corner of the room with a mismatched collection of chairs around it, and a threadbare but comfortable-looking sofa that was an alarming shade of orange was positioned against an opposite wall and faced both a wall-mounted television and the balcony doors. An open staircase neatly bisected the otherwise open room, almost separating the ‘living’ area from the food areas, and Clint guided Bucky up the stairs to another very open loft. The space was dominated by a very large, very unmade bed, and an open sink and shower flanked one side - a closed door that Bucky had to assume was a toilet beside them - and on the other side of the bed was another hodgepodge of furniture, including a leather armchair and battered dresser that stood sentinel beside a glass door leading out to another balcony.

There was so much sunlight, and the space felt very _ open _and bright, in the same way that Clint felt to Bucky, and it struck him once again just how different they were.

As Clint had assured him months ago now, they were both absolute disasters. And Bucky had reacted by finding the closest thing to a bunker that he could to live in, while Clint was living in what basically amounted to a very large treehouse. 

Clint’s hand in his own pulled Bucky away from his thoughts, from him questioning whether or not they _ could _ actually be disasters together.

“Gonna lay out some clothes for you,” Clint said. “Shower and we’ll argue about a movie after?”

Bucky had to laugh, because arguing about movies was something they did _ constantly _.

“What about you?” Bucky asked.

Clint waggled his eyebrows.

“You inviting me to conserve water with you, Barnes?”

Bucky hadn’t been, but now that Clint had said it, even jokingly, it was all he could think about. He couldn’t help but let his gaze roam over Clint’s bare chest and the soaked, hideous purple cargo shorts that were plastered to his long legs.

When he met Clint’s eyes again, Clint was pink-cheeked.

“Don’t look at me like that while I smell like the river,” Clint groused, diffusing the tension without really rejecting Bucky. “I’m gonna use the outdoor shower,” he added.

Bucky nodded. That made more sense, sure. They had, after all, only exchanged a few kisses at this point, had indulged in one night of chicken sexting that Bucky was fairly confident _ he _ had won after probably cheating and sending Clint a dick pic, the result of which had been Clint calling him, voice rough and breathless, and the two of them jerking off together while Clint waxed poetic about Bucky’s dick.

It didn’t mean he was able to stop himself from giving Clint’s ass a long, lingering look as the man rifled through his dresser to produce clean, dry clothes for the both of them. 

Clint caught him at it, made a bit of a show of wiggling his ass, and then dropped sweatpants and a shirt on his bed for Bucky before grabbing a second pair of each for himself and heading for the stairs.

“Shower,” Clint called over his shower as he headed down. “You’ve got the rest of the afternoon to stare at my ass.”

Bucky laughed, but followed Clint’s directions and stripped out of his soaked clothing before turning on the shower and stepping under the blessedly hot, strong spray of water.

He decided to go ahead and shower, instead of just rinsing off, and indulged in using Clint’s body wash and, with a grimace, shampoo-conditioner two in one. The body wash, at least, was nice. Even the body wash wasn’t anything fancy - just Dove Men’s Clean Comfort - but it smelled like Clint and, well, Bucky had no problem admitting that he liked the way Clint smelled.

He had no similar attachments to Clint’s shampoo-conditioner monstrosity and he could _ feel _ his hair drying out and rebelling as he fingered it in.

Bucky dried himself off and pulled on the sweats and t-shirt Clint had left out for him. It was, predictably and no doubt intentionally, a well-worn _ MARINES _ shirt from Clint’s days in the service. Although Clint was taller than Bucky, Bucky’s chest and shoulders were broader, and the shirt was tight across his torso. The sweats, on the other hand, were _ just _ long enough to make Bucky intensely aware that he wasn’t in his own clothes. 

Downstairs, Clint was in a shirt with a diagram of a pizza on it, and sweatpants that clung to the ass that Bucky so admired. He was in the kitchen area, the recovered cooler on the counter, and seemed to be putting together a plate of sandwiches.

“Nothing fancy,” he informed Bucky, looking up at him mid-sentence and then staring at him for a moment in silence.

Bucky arched an eyebrow at him.

“Sorry,” pink cheeked, Clint offered up a wry grin. “You, uh,” he gestured towards Bucky’s chest. “You look good in my shirt.”

“Jarhead,” Bucky muttered.

“Damn right,” Clint’s grin was brighter now. He snagged two cans of Budweiser from the cooler and passed them to Bucky with a nod towards the couch.

Bucky took the beers over, and Clint followed with the plate of sandwiches. As they settled onto the cushions, thighs pressed together and no pretense at sitting on opposite ends of the couch, Bucky noticed that Clint still didn’t have hearing aids in.

“You still want to watch a movie?” He asked, gesturing at Clint’s ears.

Clint shrugged.

“Feel kinda gross. I’ve got a spare set of BTEs but, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just put on the subtitles.”

It gave Bucky pause, less because of the movie thing, and more because it felt awfully vulnerable. Bucky in Clint’s home for the first time, and Clint doing this, _ giving _ him this trust or - or whatever it was.

But Clint was already picking up a sandwich and taking a huge bite, so maybe Bucky was making more of it that it was. Or maybe Bucky was just -

“Relax,” Clint shoved against his thigh. 

Bucky nodded and tried to make a conscious effort to do just that. He picked up a sandwich, cracked open his beer, and proceeded to argue with Clint about what they should watch.

Eventually, they settled on _ Jurassic Park _, and eventually, Clint’s fingers tangled in Bucky’s hair and, eventually, they ended up sprawled on the couch, with Bucky pressed along Clint’s side and dinosaurs rampaging around on the television screen.

By the time the velociraptors had been freed, Clint’s hand had migrated from Bucky’s hair to his back, and Bucky himself was idly rubbing his fingers over Clint’s belly, trying to decide if phone sex and an impromptu swim put them far enough along in their stutter-stop dating for him to offer Clint a blow job.

“This okay?” Clint asked, fingers trailing down Bucky’s spine to the swell of his ass.

Bucky hummed, because it was _ very _ okay, but then made himself look up at Clint.

Clint was looking back at him, blue eyes a little dark even in the early afternoon sun.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, throat suddenly dry. “Is this?” He maneuvered his own hand lower, fingers teasing at the waistband of Clint’s sweats and the sliver of warm, golden skin that was revealed by the movement.

Clint swallowed hard, eyes growing even darker.

“Yeah,” he responded, and licked his lips before easing his thumb under Bucky’s sweats and grazing over Bucky’s bare skin.

Bucky shifted, moved to make sure he wasn’t in danger of crushing Clint’s hand against the couch back because… Bucky was considerate like that.

Clint’s lips twitched upwards in momentary mirth, but Bucky’s immediate retaliation - pushing his palm against Clint’s belly and pressing his fingers through the wiry curls of Clint’s pubic hair - had his lips parting and Clint sucking in an unsteady breath.

They moved together then, Bucky stretching up and Clint shimmying down the couch, until they could kiss with ease, mouths open and tongues tasting each other’s moans even as their hands shoved at their clothes and they risked injury kicking free of their sweatpants.

But then Clint’s fingers were teasing at Bucky’s hole and Bucky had his hand wrapped around Clint’s dick, had his own pressed against Clint’s thigh, and it felt somehow frantic and breathless yet slow and languid as they touched and kissed and curled together.

Clint came first, eyes squeezed tightly shut and his groan lost to Bucky’s kiss while his thighs trembled and his hands held Bucky close. And then Clint was pulling Bucky up, positioning him to straddle his thighs as he continued to gently finger Bucky’s ass with one hand while he stroked Bucky’s cock with the other.

“Fuck,” Bucky panted, looking down at Clint’s glassy eyes and flushed cheeks and wondering if he had ever seen anyone as beautiful. 

And then he was coming in Clint’s hand, body caught between the pressure in his ass and the hand on his cock, and Bucky closed his eyes and let himself float away.

_ Jurassic Park _ had been over for at least half an hour before they got up from the couch, sticky and a little sore, because they weren’t kids and their bodies had survived a hell of a lot and reminded the both of them of that on a daily basis. 

This time, they showered together, and Bucky resolutely avoided the shampoo-conditioner poison, and they kissed under the spray of water and Clint grinned against his forehead.

“I’m gonna have to give Lucky so many treats for this,” he said and Bucky had to laugh.

“You trained him to push me into the river, didn’t you?” He pulled away from Clint’s shoulder so that he could look up at his face while he asked the question.

Clint scoffed.

“No. But I’m sure as shit gonna train him to do it _ now _,” he added with a grin and another kiss.

Despite his misgivings and doubts, despite all of the setbacks, Bucky had to admit that their third date hadn’t been awful at all.

When he got into his Jeep an hour later, Clint waved him off, standing in the grass with Lucky at his side, and the promise to drive up to Oak Island on Friday morning for lunch at Bucky’s. For some reason, he hadn’t taken Bucky’s threat to teach Alpine to know _ him _ into the river very seriously.

But Bucky had three days and a very determined cat. 

If worse came to worse, Bucky could always just toss Clint into the shower without the excuse of scrubbing away the river and hold him down long enough to wash his hair with _ real _ shampoo and _ real _conditioner. 

It was something to think about, anyway.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Now beta read by the always amazing Ro!!!!


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